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Buck McKeon: Ignore Labor Department

Rep. Buck McKeon is in an uproar over the department’s decision to blunt a GOP argument. | Jay Westcott/POLITICO

The industry association has projected that sequestration could lead to millions of lost jobs across the country.

The WARN Act requires large employers to give 60 days’ notice to workers facing layoffs. For the president’s reelection bid, the timing couldn’t be worse. With the across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to begin taking effect on Jan. 2, the notices could be sent out as early as Nov. 2 – four days before Election Day.

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But the Labor Department contends such notices are unnecessary – and would be contrary to the spirit of the WARN Act. The department’s memo notes that the law allows for exceptions in cases of “unforeseen business circumstances.”

Sequestration, it says, is just such a circumstance because it’s not yet known how the cuts would be carried out, and there’s still a chance lawmakers will reach a deal to stave them off.

A Labor Department spokeswoman declined to discuss the issue, instead providing a list of experts she said could explain the memo.

One of the experts, Harvard Law School professor Benjamin Sachs, said the WARN Act discourages layoff notices in this context because “there’s just too much ambiguity about if the sequester is going to occur.”

“It says specifically that blanket notice is not required and blanket notice is actually a problem,” Sachs said. “It’s not a costless thing to send out WARN notices to hundreds of thousands of people, or whatever it may be. The states have to process these things and get machinery into motion.”

In Congress, Republicans consider the Labor Department’s move little more than a political stunt. The memo is “not worth the paper it’s printed on,” declared Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) during an Armed Services Committee hearing last week.

Meanwhile, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), chairman of House Education and the Workforce Committee, sent a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, calling the department’s conclusions “misleading and incomplete” and asking her to provide his committee all documents and communications related to the decision.

On the Senate side, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham mounted an unsuccessful push last week to amend next year’s Pentagon budget to require defense contractors to send out layoff warnings before Election Day.

And Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) says defense contractors should follow the Labor Department’s guidance at their own peril: “You could end up opening yourself up to lawsuits if you don’t provide this warning,” he said in an interview on Fox News.

“This is nothing more than a politically motivated stance coming from the administration,” he concluded.

Sachs, the Harvard Law School professor, noted that defense contractors are free to communicate with their employees about the looming spending cuts, regardless of the Labor Department’s interpretation of the WARN Act.

“Could these defense contractors go out on their own and tell their employees, ‘The sequester is a problem and you may be affected by this?’” Sachs said. “Sure.”

Readers' Comments (23)

Maybe someone should have sent Rep. Buck McKeon a warning notice, before he voted for this idiotic sequestration procedure, that he was "at risk" of losing some of his big fat campaign contributions from defense contractors if Congress didn't keep on delivering the pork.

How is it that Obama is on record saying that workers need to be notified so they could plan in advance and yet is now arguing that the law doesn't apply when it requires that notification to happen just before the election? Don't worry, I'm sure Rove will make sure everyone knows. Of course Rove will not know which workers need to worry so he'll have to do a blanket warning. I'm not sure if that's better for Obama and the Dems though.

I guess they'll have to let all those workers know who is responsible for the potential layoffs: the goobers in the GOP. I am sure the GOPers will be more than happy to take responsibility for the cuts and their impact on the deficit, since that is the #1 concern in DC.

The Obama Administration is running scared. Of course they don't want people warned of pending layoffs right before the election. That would give Obama a black eye and reveal the true extent of his failures. If we only looked at the defense industry, we are looking at nearly 1 million high paying jobs not including the supplier, services and other aspects of the industry. It is plausable that we could see a loss of over 5 million jobs if the defense cuts take place. Losses won't just come from the big players in the industry like Lockheed. But also from all of the smaller companies that subcontract to them.

"The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires employers with 100 workers or more to give 60 days’ notice of a plant closing or mass layoffs. And in 2007, then-Sen. Obama urged Congress to beef up the law, arguing that employers were ignoring it and the government wasn’t enforcing it.

“For too long, employers have failed to notify workers that they’re about to lose their jobs due to mass layoffs or plant closings even though notice is required by the WARN Act,” Mr. Obama said in that news release on July 17, 2007.

That same month, Mr. Obama also said, “We must act at the federal level to close the loophole that allows employers to disregard the WARN Act without penalty. We must give the WARN Act teeth, to ensure that workers are not left in the lurch without a job or a paycheck.”

That year, Senate Democrats led by Mr. Obama, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York proposed the Forewarn Act, which would have added to the regulations by requiring 90 days notice of layoffs and expanding the number of companies under federal jurisdiction. The legislation died.

The White House did not respond to a question about the apparent inconsistency between Mr. Obama’s position five years ago and the administration’s policy guidance this week."

On what are you basing that the GOP is to blame? The real problem is that the Obama Administration is spending money like some drunken sailor. He would rather borrow money from China instead of stepping up and saying no to his base.

It's really quite simple, if defense contracter send layoff notices to the entire work force then it should be viewed as that company planning to go out of business and all contracts need to be review. Pull a regan and declare their contracts null and void and ooen up the bidding process. Let the CEO's know that they will be responsible for returning all the money for services not rendered.

People like you kill me. You sat back for eight years while 'YOUR" Good Ole' party spend obsene amounts on everything from Medicare B to two useless wars. You guys say nothing when its your party doing the spending, I geuss its only spending when the Democrats do it right? I guess cuts are only meant for programs that you don't care about..

The Republicans (obviously not in good faith) agreed to this trigger, but of course..the buck never stops with a Republican.

Tell 100,000 that they are being laid off and then only lay off 10,000 talk about fuzzy math. No wonder American Taxpayers are paying $1200.00 per toilet seats! Your children are going to love you in your old age!

The defense contractors can send or post notices at the worksite without having to turn the place upside down. By this time everyone of these worthless defense industry "workers" already know the gravy train is pulling into the station-soon time to disembarq. The only ones worth two cents are the design engineers , the rest are a bunch of overpaid Rosy the riveters. Send 'em all home until we can afford to pay them.

On what are you basing that the GOP is to blame? The real problem is that the Obama Administration is spending money like some drunken sailor. He would rather borrow money from China instead of stepping up and saying no to his base.

Seriously, are you really paying attention? I just read last week where the GOP congress is forcing some tank down the Pentagon and taxpayers' throats, even though the Pentagon does not want it because it is outdated, because they can't upset the defense contractor where they get campaign bucks and they must protect the congressmen in those districts.. The whole thing is a rip-off for the country and the taxpayers. Did it bother you that China paid for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and we are in hock to them for billions of wasted dollars and they have no clue where that money went. Do some reading....you might be enlightened.